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Chad
In: Ramsbottom
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Claire...on a general point; please don't simply misrepresent my position in order to score points over me. It may be an admirable tactic in school debating contests, but I'm far too long in the tooth to engage in such game play...it isn't big and it isn't clever.
And may I politely suggest you put the books down occasionally...and start thinking for yourself.
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| Claire...on a general point; please don't simply misrepresent my position in order to score points over me. It may be an admirable tactic in school debating contests, but I'm far too long in the tooth to engage in such game play....it isn't big and it isn't clever. |
For me school debating is the place for not bothering with facts. I have no idea how you think I've misrepresented you, but if I have it is unintentional -- I have no interest in scoring points off you or anyone else.
On a general point back: Writing patronising tripe to someone you don't know at all and whose motives you're misrepresenting isn't big or clever either.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Chad wrote: | | Claire...on a general point; please don't simply misrepresent my position in order to score points over me. It may be an admirable tactic in school debating contests, but I'm far too long in the tooth to engage in such game play...it isn't big and it isn't clever. |
Chad. I assure you. I have known Claire for years. I've never had reason to question her motivation. Any misrepresentation of your positon, I am certain, stems from honest miscommunication.
| And may I politely suggest you put the books down occasionally...and start thinking for yourself. |
Probably Claire's principal strong point is in keeping the rest of us honest.
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Chad
In: Ramsbottom
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Claire...do please accept my apologies (I'm just a grumpy old sod, who's had a bad day) and I regretted those comments almost as soon as I had posted them.
I really do think you have freshened things up since your arrival and I'm sure, once you get up to speed, we will get to know your own personal opinions on a whole range of issues.
I'm sometimes guilty of expecting people to read my mind and consequently failing to convey my point clearly (and sometimes I overcompensate and waffle on a bit).
So again, please accept my apologies...(whilst I go away and try to regain my normal sunny disposition.)
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Mick: You remember my husband (who did an old fashioned 'subsidiary' in geology -- or rather palaeontology). He says that fossils are formed by high pressure and chemical processes (caveat: not all fossils are formed in the same way). Anything deposited within 10 - 20 feet (depending on the strata and thickness of ice etc) is likely to be destroyed by glaciation. Fossils nearer the surface ie anything deposited immediately before (geology time wise which means thousands of years) or during the glacial period are likely to have been destroyed by the scouring effects (rather than weight necessarily) of glaciation.
But anything much lower need not be affected. So you should be safe from dinosaur fossil evidence and anything deposited at significantly earlier epochs that is trapped in sedimentary rock (or metamorphic rock) at much lower depths.
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Chad, I'm sorry for upsetting you. It was certainly not my intention (and I had no idea I was doing it.) I feel mortified about it. Let's put it behind us.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| If Cro-Magnon can exist in the Arctic he can exist in the Arctic. Sure, some populations might be dealt lethal blows but the species would surely survive anything thrown at them locally. |
You can't survive the frozen north without the tools and the tools can not be developed in the frozen north.
But...
That means they came from somewhere else -- almost anywhere else, temperate. As they spread north and met new challenges, they had to make new innovations in order to proceed -- which might mean that almost forever, they did not proceed. Moving farther north means getting more tooled up. The more tooled up you are, the more innovative you can be: technology development is exponential.
At some point the inventions were made that led swiftly from the primitive toolset to the elaborate Cro-Magnon toolset. At the start, there was no sign of Cro-Magnonness. At the end, we have the definition of Cro-Magnonity. With the push-pull effect of innovation and colonisation of new environments, the peak of tool design should first appear -- suddenly, in palaeo-whatsit terms -- in the worst place: the frozen north. {Cf. the way modern technology is epitomised in the space programme.}
As for the evidence, it has either been rubbed out by ice {we have no idea how far we're going back} or it is before our very eyes, but by definition not labelled Cro-Magnon.
And the evidence of Cro-Magnon spreading from the Kara sea... is either not preserved in the tundra and oft-flooded plains... or just hasn't been found because it's in deepest, darkest Russia... or has been found and we just don't know about it because it's in deepest, darkest Russia... or we haven't heard about it because orthodoxy can't bring itself to identify it correctly...
Once fully equipped, they can go anywhere: Beringia, Indo-China, Australia, Middle East, Africa, America. {But it still takes an organic length of time.}
It's tempting to say central/northern Europe being the original origin explains why the greatest diversity of physical characteristics is found there. That would mean Europeans are descended from non-Cro-Magnon Anatomically Modern Humans: who are not more widespread because they were not originally equipped to be more widespread.
There is no going, good or otherwise: there is only creeping, where every step is negligibly different from the last, though the ten-thousandth can be radically different from the first.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| You can't survive the frozen north without the tools and the tools can not be developed in the frozen north. |
You are once more committing the "Me, I don't like it there" solecism. The Innuit don't regard this as the Frozen North, they regard it as a perfect place for catching seals (and stuff) which provide them with everything they need. They're always complaining if things get too warm.
Nobody has pointed out (and really ought to have done) the obvious point: Cro-Magnons could not have evolved in Beringia. Let's not forget, Cro-Magnons are miles away from Neanderthal and Homo Erectus and all those geezers. Not just in skeketonian terms but in terms of their tool-kit. It never occurs to orthodoxy to consider the sheer impossiblity of Cro-Magnon just turning up fully accoutred. They must have been evolving (biologically and culturally) somewhere.
When people say the Papuan New Guineans are living in the Stone Age it's because...wait for it...they're living in the bleedin Stone Age. Now if you don't believe me that the Esquimaux are Cro-Magnons, then take a look at their tool-kit. It's identical with the Cro-Magnon toolkit. Now how do you suppose that came about? Unless you're going down the soppy road of coincidence, either the Esquimaux got it from the Cro-Magnons or the Cro-Magnons got it from the Esquimaux. Or they are the same people. Let's apply ol' Occam and assume they're the same people.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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All this rubbing-out to leave the oldest available evidence to coincide with the greatest extent of the glaciation only works if the direction of advance of the people and of the ice is the same, so Cro-Magnon must have come from the north. His rich toolset reached the "critical mass" that allowed Cro-Magnon to exploit every habitat and there is evidence of it from Beringia to the Middle East, laid down by unhindered organic expansion. But the missing evidence is of the evolution of the toolset, the on-their-way-to-being-Cro-Magnon people.
For all such evidence to be missing, it must have been laid down within the range of growing and retreating ice sheets, which implies that these people preferentially occupied that ecological niche within so many miles of the ice. There are bison and reindeer/caribou inland and the oceans are fertile, so they could have had a pretty good living.
{I'm going to park this thought here, but I am not satisfied. I still say they needed a pretty well-developed toolkit in order to become cold-adapted. If, on the contrary, they survived well enough with a rudimentary kit, what changed, why would a non-expansionist culture make such advances?
Unless the land-lubbers suddenly gained access to the sea and moved swiftly to take advantage of it. "With one bound they were free."
If they became cold-adapted at the natural pace I suggested before, moving slowly into the harsher environment by organic push-pull, then it would have to be sheer coincidence that all evidence of them happened to get rubbed out by the Last Glacial Maximum. And I don't like that.}
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| You can't survive the frozen north without the tools and the tools can not be developed in the frozen north. |
I'd like to try out a new wrinkle on you (since nobody seems to have taken up the old wrinkles, which I will be returning to and explaining shortly). Let us accept ex hypothesi that glaciation eradicated all the fossil evidence of Modern Man before 40,000 BP. That is necessary because we know he must have existed.
However this assumption does not extend to his tools. Yes, glaciation would have eradicated the archaeological evidence too but in this case we cannot assume that he had a toolkit. In fact you are now going to assume he had no toolkit! This is not such a bold step because ninety-nine point nine recurring of all known species lack a toolkit.
We do know however from later evidence that he seemed to have had an affinity (to put it at its lowest) with animals, so feel free to use this if necessary. So now you have to come up with scenarios in three respects:
1. How did Cro-Magnon exist on the edge of the ice without tools?
2. Since all Cro-Magnon finds away from the ice (ie after 40,000) show him in possession of a toolkit, how did he acquire it?
3. What would be the effect from then on of Modern Man plus toolkit?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| But, to be honest, I am wary in principle of a position that disputes any dating method that can measure before 40 000BP to support a theory that relies on no dating measure being able to find a date prior to 40 000BP, because it has a self-serving component that is hard to ignore. Why am I wrong? |
I cannot deny that this is entirely self-serving but there are good reasons to suppose that it is more than that. When I first outlined this theory (twenty-five or more years ago) it was complete orthodoxy to say that Modern Man was just 40,000 years old. In those days he didn't even rate a whole historical category, he was simply "Upper Palaeolithic" whereas Neanderthal and the Hominids were the "Lower Palaeolithic". Some of you might remember these by the more popular labels "New Stone Age and "Old Stone Age".
This was obviously wrong so I set to work. However, since then two things have happened
1. Modern Man has been stretched back from 40,000 to 200,000
2. The Out-of-Africa thesis (for Modern Man, it was always implicit for hominids) was developed.
Since this destroyed my thesis I was on intense Applied Epistemological watch. Two systematic potential malfunctions were immediately obvious
1. If you reported a Modern Man finding younger than the current record, you got a published article in a technical journal and a step up in your career; if you reported a find that beat the current record you got published in every newspaper in the world and became a superstar.
2. Whenever a new record was established anywhere outside Africa, an even earlier one inside Africa was required to keep Out-of-Africa going.
These two things meant that any halfway competent Applied Epistemologist could spot the bogus stuff but would be in great difficulties if he was trying to overthrow these two paradigms (ie very early Modern Man and Out-of-Africa) if the finds were scientifically valid. I hope I can show you (not to mention me) that it's all bogus.
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| I hope I can show you (not to mention me) that it's all bogus. |
I hope so too! I already think the Out of Africa thesis is bogus. I have less faith in the dating techniques than you do, I think we should take dating on a case by case basis -- checking exactly what is dated and how.
I have a book (that I first read about in one of Colin Wilson's books) that is called 'Forbidden Archaeology' by Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson. For anyone not familiar with it, it sets out two bodies of evidence -- A and B. They aim to show that the two sets employ identical techniques in evaluating paleoanthropological evidence. Each set has its share of human remains or artifacts being found by workmen or amateurs, as well as by professionals and experts. Each set employs the same dating techniques at the same labs and often the experts overlap between the two. The difference between the two bodies of evidence is that set A dates humans (or human tools) to outside of the current paradigm (not just distant past, but say, in America too early for example). Set B dates humans (or human tools) to dates which support or fit the current paradigm. Their argument is that if you accept set B as scientifically valid, you must also accept set A. Or reject both. Cremo has some sort of religious position (I think he is a Hindu) and I think the Thompson is a science writer. The point of the book is evidently to persuade the reader to accept set A as reasonable evidence. My instinct is to reject much of A and B. The standard of evidence overall between the sets might (or might not) be equal between the two sets, (it's a nearly 900 page book and I haven't read it all) but within the sets it varies considerably. Some of it is rubbish. Much of the book is detailed reporting of dry facts. But they make their point about the special pleading that the scientific community allows for 'correct' finds as opposed to the higher standards that are employed against anomalous ones. It certainly is a useful source to demonstrate the unequal standards used to maintain the paradigm.
There hasn't been much discussion on this board (unless I'm just using your search facility badly) about the Solutrean hypothesis. The talk of tool kits reminded me of the Horizon programme (in 2002) about it, 'Stoneage Columbus' -- a link here for anyone who hasn't seen it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/columbus.shtml
The programme was about Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley's theory about a link between the Solutreans ('Cro-Magnons' in France about 19 000BP) and the Clovis....but also a link between the technology used by the Solutrean and Arctic Eskimo ...
'Dennis Stanford returned to his earlier hunch, looking for clues among the Arctic Eskimo peoples. Despite the influx of modern technologies, he was heartened to discover that traditional techniques endured. Clothing makers in Barrow, Alaska, recognised some Solutrean bone needles he showed them as typical of their own. The caribou skin clothing the Inuit still choose to wear could equally have been made by people in 16,000BC. And for Eskimo peoples the Arctic is not a desert - but a source of plentiful sea food. If the Solutreans had the Clovis point it would have made a formidable harpoon weapon to ensure a food supply.'
The Clovis points were discovered to be very similar to the Solutrean flints, in fact they found what they classified as an 'technological midpoint between the French Solutrean style and the Clovis points', which they dated to 16 000BP. (Found in Virginia.)
And there was a genetic link:
'In the DNA profile of the Ichigua Native American tribe he identified a lineage that was clearly European in origin, too old to be due to genetic mixing since Columbus' discovery of the New World. Instead it dated to Solutrean times. Wallace's genetic timelines show the Ice Age prompted a number of migrations from Europe to America. It looks highly likely that the Solutreans were one.'
The programme essentially concluded that technology was being transmitted from Europe to North America in stoneage times, but much of the evidence (outside of the dating) could equally work the other way. After all, the Solutreans are another of those groups that make 'sudden' technological advances -- as if from nowhere. ...The Solutreans were a remarkably society, the most innovative and adaptive of the time.'
The problem is that while recently, pre-Clovis evidence up to 30 000BP has been tentatively accepted, for a long period archaeologists weren't expecting to find evidence earlier than 12 000BP and therefore, haven't. (Or have found it but have elected to carefully cultivate their careers by carefully ignoring it.). In the Forbidden Archaeology book, some of these rejected finds are listed in their set A -- including for example, evidence from 1933 when a French archaeologist insisted that implements found in Wyoming were similar to early European Paleolithic flaked implements and was backed at the time by other European archeologists, but got short shrift from the American ones. The implements were believed to be middle Pleistocene (so the stakes were high!).
| The Out-of-Africa thesis (for Modern Man, it was always implicit for hominids) was developed |
Why these original hominids from Africa wouldn't have gone to America has always been a mystery. It's paradise for humans/hominids. The case for waves of immigration in to Atlantic Europe (in Cro Magnon times) is more intuitive to me than the other way round. [And you'll have to shoot me anyway because I think the multi-regionalists have all the best lines in the Out of Africa debate. My sense is that more global human interaction can overcome the problem of parallel evolution.]
But my thinking would mean making the North American Modern Man older. You seem to be implying that all Modern Man is younger. So I'll watch this space.....
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I won't get involved in these alternative theories since they seem to be either a version of mine (a simple 'As Above, So Below' inversion) or a rival theory (which I could not approach rationally for fear of harming baby). But I will plod on a) setting questions and b) trying to invalidate every pre-40,000 finding for Modern Man.
In respect of the latter, can we all agree that mtDNA evidence is absolutely valueless? We do not know the time-scale of one mutation so it is completely pointless just adding them all up and then producing a large figure with BP on the end. [I do not object to using mtDNA for other purposes; it may well be excellent for identifying population movements or whatever.]
If we accept that 'normal' stratigraphical dating methods are far too subjective to be useful in this highly charged arena, that leaves us with the various atomic-decay methods. The reason I accept carbon dating is because a) it is done on the bones themselves and not on dubiously associated bits and bobs found nearby and b) it has sturdily stood the test of time. But when I read
| Mungo Man was directly dated to about 60 000BP by three approved scientific dating methods and the layers were later dated back to 40 -- 45000BP by the Out of Africa crowd. |
I know we are not dealing with properly scientific evidence. It is inconceivable that any academic 'crowd' would have altered a post-40,000 carbon date by fifty per cent -- they would be laughed out of court.
But on a wider note, you should get used to feeling for what's right. At the moment it is inconceivable, if Modern Man started out in Africa in 200,000 (or even 130,000), that he would have left just one 100,000 site in Israel and a doubtful 60,000 one in Australia. But people should post up other pre-40,000 sightings for us to sink our teeth into in case I have done 'the crowd' an injustice.
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| I know we are not dealing with properly scientific evidence. It is inconceivable that any academic 'crowd' would have altered a post-40,000 carbon date by fifty per cent -- they would be laughed out of court. |
These aren't 'carbon' dates from what I'm aware of: the original dating was done by Uranium dating, OSL and ESP.(on bone, tooth enamel and soil)
The date was altered by TL testing on sediments.
I don't know if any carbon dating was carried out at all.
Another way they've used to date early occupation in Australia is rock art -- at Arnhem Land, the 'ochre' used has been dated--.along with the occupation layers--.by TL (and OSL for the latter) to 55-60 000BP but I don't know the details I'm afraid....
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This entirely confirms my suspicions.
1. They all implicitly confirm that pre-40,000 carbon dating is useless since nobody has used it
2. Although given the importance of the finding (four separate lab procedures no less) it is faintly staggering that carbon-dating wasn't used, so the suspicion must be that it was used and then suppressed ("a clearly contaminated sample") because the figure was way too young for everybody's purposes.
3. If three different methods (U, OSL and ESP) all come up with the same result viz 55-60,000 then that should be the end of the matter, scientifically speaking
4. But since all three appear to be contradicted by a fourth 'scientific' method (T-L) then all four have to be rejected as scientific.
Clearly we need to dig deeper.
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